Written by 9:31 am Learning Chronicle

Discover your Life Purpose

It is said that ‘Necessity’ is the mother of “INVENTION”. But I do not agree to believe this. I believe whenever we do not accept the resources available or we do not find them suitable to our situation/s, we invent. It is even more important to have purpose not to accept what we have, we invent. 

When we stop accommodating ourselves with the situation/s, we have been forced to find reason to find alternatives. This is according to me is the process of finding PURPOSE. However, before we understand more about this it is important for us to know; do I have a purpose in my life? Or, how I discover real purpose of my life? I’m not talking about job we do, our daily responsibilities, or even our long-term goals. I mean the real reason is, why are we here at all – the reason of our existence. Perhaps you don’t believe to have a purpose and still life is very meaningful for you to have materialistic achievements or substances in life, or to have them in life may be a purpose for you. Doesn’t matter. Not believing to have a purpose won’t prevent you from discovering it, just as a lack of belief in gravity won’t prevent you from being graceful. 

Here’s a story about Bruce Lee which sets the stage for this little exercise. 

A master martial artist asked Bruce to teach him everything he knew about martial arts. Bruce held up two cups, both filled with liquid. “The first cup,” said Bruce “represents all of your knowledge about martial arts. The second cup represents all of my knowledge about martial arts. If you want to fill your cup with my knowledge, you must first empty your cup of your Knowledge. 

If you want to discover your true purpose in life, you must first empty your mind of all the false rationale you have been qualified including the idea that you may have no purpose at all. So how to discover your purpose in life? There are many ways to do this, here is one of the simplest that anyone can do. The more open you are to the process and the more you have faith in it, the faster it will work for you. 

But not being open to it or having any doubts about it or thinking it’s an entirely idiotic and meaningless, waste of time, it will still yield the same results as long as you stick with it. 

Here's what to do:

Take out a blank sheet of paper and start writing. Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?” 

Write down everything that comes to your mind. Don’t evaluate them; they may sound little stupid, not very relevant or anything that you think. An answer that pops into your mind doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine. 

You must continue writing the answer till that makes you think and cry. This is your purpose. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a student or a teacher or a professional. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. 

Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your mind from of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The fake answers may come from your mind and your memories. 

But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source entirely. 

For those who are very well-established and successful in their life or a career and not well aware about the process and reason to have purpose in life, they are in low-awareness living. For them it will take a lot longer to get all the fake answers and perceptions out of their mind. 

But if you persist, after 100 or 200 or maybe even 500 answers, you’ll be struck by the answer that causes you to surge with emotion, the answer that breaks you. If you’ve never done this, it may very well sound silly to you. So let it seem silly, and do it anyway. As you go through this process, some of your answers will be very similar. You may even re-list previous answers. Then you might head off on a new tangent and generate 10-20 more answers along some other theme. And that’s fine. You can list whatever answers pops into your head as long as you just keep writing. 

At some point during the process you may want to quit and just can’t see it converging. You may feel to give up or to quit or to do something else. That’s normal. But don’t do that and just push this feeling and just keep writing. The feeling of resistance will eventually pass. 

You may also discover a few answers that seem to give you a mini-surge of emotion, but they don’t make you cry — they are just a bit off. Highlight those answers as you go along, so you can come back to them to generate new permutations. Each reflects a piece of your purpose, but individually they aren’t complete. When you start getting these kinds of answers, it just means you are getting warm. Keep going. 

It’s important to do this alone without any interruptions. If you are a rebellion, then feel free to start with the answer, “I don’t have a purpose,” or “Life is meaningless,” and take it from there. If you keep at it, you will still eventually converge with the process. 

When I did this exercise, it took me about 5 hours, and I reached my final answer at step 102. While writing, partially I got pieces of the answer appeared at steps 05, 23, and 65, and then the bulk of it fell into place and was refined through steps 91 to 102. I felt the feeling of resistance (wanting to get up and do something else, expecting the process to fail, feeling very impatient and even irritated) around steps 55-60. At times I took a 2-minute break to close my eyes, relax, clear my mind, and to focus on the intention for the answer to come to me — this was helpful as the answers I received after this break began to have greater clarity. 

Here was my final answer: to live consciously and courageously, to resonate with love and compassion, to awaken the great spirits within others, and leave this world in peace. 

When you find your own unique answer to the question of why you’re here, you will feel it resonate with you deeply. The words will seem to have a special energy to you, and you will feel that energy whenever you read them. It will motivate you as many times you read. 

Discovering your purpose is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it with you on a daily basis and working on yourself to the point where you become that purpose. 

If you’re inclined to ask why this little process works, just put that question aside until you have successfully completed it. Once you have done that, you will probably have your own answer as to why it works. If you ask 10 different people why this works, people who have successfully completed it, you will get 10 different answers, all filtered through their individual belief systems, and each will contain its own reflection of truth. 

Give it a shot! At the very least, you’ll learn one of two things: either you earn focus or else you will find your true purpose in life. And this will be the beginning of great life that creates community of enlightened and successful people. 

-Makarand Bhatt

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